This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
The tips and techniques explained here may be outdated.

Heals that make you go HMMMM…

“Run Heroics” they said.. “Get epic loots from badges” they said… Well… they also said “Can anyone heal? We can’t run this without a healer. How about a Tank? LF Tank/Heals then G2G” *sigh* So after standing around Dalaran for a LONG while and hearing the lamentations of my guildies I decided that even though I REALLY REALLY want badges on Lilac, my warlock… running something was better than NOT running something.. so I played Tatia most of the weekend.

Tanking I found to be mostly the same.. Exorcism cast time is a Pain In My Ass. I ended up using it as a second frisbee for pulling when my frisbee was on cooldown.. or on boss fights I started with Exorcism followed up by fisbee to start off with a big threat lead. I won’t be taking on the tanking role full time anytime soon.. but I make an adequate tank. I tanked rarely enough before the patch that I’m not really noticing any other difference with tanking after the patch.

Healing I found to be mostly the same.. and yet a smidge different. Eventually I partied up with another healing pally and we did a little experimentation (naked.. in the Crystal Song Forest.. what.. purely for scientific reasons).

Healing changes I care about:
– If beacon of light is up then any heal on any in-range party member also heals the beacon target.
– If you Flash a Sacred Shield target then that target receives a HoT called “Flash of Light” that heals for the same amount as the original Flash of Light.

The Sacred Shield HoT will use any Sacred Shield, not just your own. So, if Pally 1 shields Pally 2 and then Pally 2 Flashes herself.. Pally 2 ends up with a HoT. Even better, if Pally 1 ALSO flashes Pally 2, Pally 2 ends up with TWO HoTs. (Hmm.. I wonder if this is true even if the pallies aren’t Holy.. can a Ret use her insta-cast Flash to get double benefit on a sacred Shielded target?)

Beacons are greedy. If Pally 1 casts beacon on a target then only Pally 1′s heals on the rest of the group are teleported to that target. Pally 2 sees no benefit.. though since the patch a single target can have more than one beacon on them.

The HoT from flashing a Sacred Shield target is not teleported to the Beacon Target.

I’m having issues setting these up with Power Auras.. ah well.. I’ll continue to fiddle with them.

4 comments to Heals that make you go HMMMM…

Yes, ALL Flash of Lights benefit from the Sacred Shield change. It’s part of the base spell. Hell, if a level 30 healed someone with a SS buff – their itty-bitty level 30 FoL would generate a HoT.

This also continues to build Retribution up as one of the most survivable melee classes. Consider an Art of War Flash of Light will: crit, the HoT will heal for the crit amount, AND they get the Art of War HoT for another 30%.

Unfortunately though, you’ve got a few things not quite right. If pally 1 shields the tank, and pally 2 HoT’s the tank with a Flash of Light, pally 1 can NOT HoT the tank, because pally 2 already has a HoT on the tank. They do not stack, nor do they refresh by anyone other than the original player.

Sacred shields also do not stack, and are overwritten regardless of talent/T8 set bonus. So if Pally 1 has the talent Divine Guardian and 4 piece T8, but Pally 2 doesn’t, Pally 2′s much inferior shield will still overwrite Pally 1′s superior one.

Fortunately, however, beacon of lights DO stack. So Pally 1 AND Pally 2 can both put a beacon on the same tank, and all of their /direct/ heals will transfer to that tank from BOTH paladins. (Direct heals are Holy Shock, Holy Light, and Flash of Light – ONLY – Flash of Light HoT, Glyph of Holy Light, and Holy Mending do not transfer through Beacon).

I appreciate that you’re the authority here.. but in testing last night with one Sacred Shield we ended up with TWO HoTs on the Sacred Shield target. Pally healers were Tatia and Pangorex on Khaz Modan-US (in case you want to look at gear).

We did not try to put two Sacred Shields on the same target.

Beacon’s stacking is great.. but I still can’t tell the difference between “party mate is in range of my BEACON” and “Party mate is in range of the other pally’s beacon” the buff that means “in-range of beacon” doens’t seem to retain the info about the fact that it’s -my- Beacon. So if I’m just watching for “who has the buff” I can’t be 100% sure they’re actually within range of -my- beacon.

As for tanking with the spell cast time increase and no longer a instant cast for Exorcism it isn’t really isn’t as useful anymore unfortunately during actual tanking. The only thing it’s useful for is during the initial target pull or if a lone target is running away from you and your unable to use AS as well. Otherwise it now suck to use during tanking. But Hand of Reckoning now works for pulling with threat and some damage.

I don’t keep up all that much with all things healing since do very little of it next to none. But many the answers you seek is in Ferarro’s blog post dated 07/12/09 – “Not so Hot” and it’s about HoT’s and Beacon. In case you missed reading it you can check it out as it’s a good read from the PTR testing at that time. So if things hasn’t changed since that post the FoL HoT via multiple Paladins healing a single target with SS does stack for the multiple HoT effect from what I last read. But check out the post as it’s mostly a healing post.
.-= Ardent Defender´s last blog ..WoW Update 08/07/09 =-.